Girish Mahajan (Editor)

The Light and the Dark

Updated on
Edit
Like
Comment
Share on FacebookTweet on TwitterShare on LinkedInShare on Reddit
Country
  
United Kingdom

Series
  
Strangers and Brothers

Publication date
  
1947

Originally published
  
1947

Page count
  
392

Language
  
English

Publisher
  
London : Faber

Media type
  
Print

Author
  
C. P. Snow

Genre
  
Fiction

The Light and the Dark t2gstaticcomimagesqtbnANd9GcQIG17x4xVd1yZZRI

Preceded by
  
George Passant, The Conscience of the Rich, Time of Hope

Followed by
  
The Conscience of the Rich, The Masters, Time of Hope, The New Men

Similar
  
C P Snow books, Strangers and Brothers books

The Light and the Dark is the fourth novel in C. P. Snow's Strangers and Brothers series. Set in England in the lead-up to and during World War II, it portrays Lewis Eliot's friendship with the gifted scholar and remarkable individual Roy Calvert, and Calvert's inner turmoil and quest for meaning in life. Calvert was based on Snow's friend, Coptic scholar, Charles Allberry. Their relationship is developed further in The Masters.

The title - The Light and the Dark - refers to the beliefs of Manichaeism, which the book refers to as "Christian heresy" but is now often referred to as religion in its own right. "In its cosmology, the whole of cosmology is a battle of the light against the dark. Man's spirit is part of the light, and his flesh of the dark."

The title has resonance to the buildup to war, the sense of catastrophe so widespread in the 1930s, and Calvert's mental health problems.

References

The Light and the Dark Wikipedia